Never and Forever
by AliaofTwoWorlds
Summary: He lay there reading a book and she traced one of the long scars that ran across his back; those scars that reminded her that she could never, ever again go back to being a street girl. This kid was forever a part of their lives. Not a romance.
1. Chapter 1

The main part of this story has been bugging me for a while, so I had to write it. But the whole scene with the vacation was randomly inspired by the week I recently spent on my (well, technically my parents') boat out on Higgins Lake, which is without a doubt the most gorgeous lake I've ever been to. I was laying out on the boat eating Subway and for some odd reason I thought of Kid. And by the way, this is not a romance. I see Liz as more of an older sister/mother figure to Kid, and that's how I try to portray her. There are parts that almost start to sound like a romance in here, specifically in the first chapter, but that's not what I'm implying. This story is mostly centered around Liz and Kid, because Liz is the older and more mature one, more prone to this type of thought.

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><p>It was a weird feeling, being out on vacation.<p>

It wasn't as though they never took a break or anything, but for all of them to be out here, together… and the setting was just too odd. Soul, Maka, Blair, Black Star, Tsubaki, Kid, Liz, Patty, Stein, Spirit, and Marie were all out on a _boat_, floating somewhere in the middle of some lake; it had been Spirit's idea to take a vacation out here and the boat was not difficult for Shinigami-sama to procure, though he himself did not join them.

What was really so odd about the informal setting was how well they all fit into it. Everything just seemed normal, lacking the awkwardness that would usually be present when friends and students, parents and teachers all took a vacation together.

Patty had been the first, of course, to leap happily into the beautiful water as soon as they had anchored the boat in the middle of the lake. Black Star soon followed her, dragging Tsubaki along with him. Spirit suggested that he and Maka take a swim together, earning him a slap from his daughter. Looking slightly put out, he was now sipping some sort of champagne and talking with Stein and Marie. Blair was sprawled out on a deck chair, tanning; Maka was doing the same, though with noticeably less skin exposed to the burning sun than the neko. Soul, who claimed not to like the heat, was sitting in the cool shade of the entrance to the boat's cabin, watching the swimmers.

After a few minutes of shrieking from Patty for her sister to join her, Liz came and stood on the swim platform. Kid was standing beside her, keeping watch over the swimmers. He wasn't dressed for the water by any means—though his attire was more casual than his usual meister outfit, he still wore rather nice-looking pants and a dark jacket over a white dress shirt. "Come swim with us, Kid," Liz said as she stepped to the edge, swinging her arms in imitation of a graceful dive that she would never actually attempt—belly flops were more in her line of talent.

"I don't think so," the young reaper said with a skeptical smile. Liz pouted at him for a moment, and then, abandoning all rational thought, she pushed him, hard.

Maka, Soul, and Blair looked up at the sound as Kid splashed into the water backwards. He emerged a second later, treading water as Liz crouched down on the swim platform, and he looked grumpily up at her. "I just got to display all of the grace of a true shinigami right there, as you shoved me into the lake. Thank you for that." He splashed water in her face and she squealed.

Maka's mouth fell open, and even Soul looked taken aback—they were expecting an angry outburst from the reaper, not a short and playful reprimand—and they were expecting Kid to immediately crawl out of the water, stammering about how asymmetrical he was when wet. They certainly were not expecting him to stay in the water as Liz laughed and jumped in, rather more gracefully, beside him.

Kid's head disappeared under the surface for a few moments as his dark shape moved about underwater. When he resurfaced, he reached out and grabbed the edge of the swim platform with one hand, bringing the other up out of the water to place his now waterlogged shoes up on the platform. He disappeared under the water once more, and when he resurfaced this time, he flung his soaking jacket up on top of his shoes. He then pushed off the boat and did a graceful back-flip underwater, coming up to grin in Liz's face.

Patty swam up behind Kid and splashed water at the back of his head. "I thought it was going to take a lot longer to get you in the water!" she exclaimed happily.

Out of the water, Blair had resumed her tanning, but Maka and Soul were watching the young reaper and his weapons swim around each other, laughing and splashing. "Weird, isn't it?" Maka said.

"Hm?" Soul replied casually.

"I mean, you never really see Kid as someone to just… relax like that. He seems to be having so much fun, and he's not even worrying about symmetry or anything. It's kinda weird. Good, though," she added with a smile.

After an hour or so of playing around in the water, Black Star announced that he was the fastest swimmer in the world and dared anyone to challenge him, which was their cue to get back on the boat. Tsubaki had to drag her meister out, but eventually they all settled around the boat, eating the sandwiches that Tsubaki had prepared and talking. In another hour, Soul announced that he was hot and climbed to the very front of the boat, where the bow rose up out of the water about five feet, and leapt off. This prompted Black Star to announce that he could make a bigger splash, and he quickly attempted to climb the side of the cabin, looking for a higher platform to jump from.

Patty, impossible to keep out of the water, got a running head start off the bow and did an enormous cannonball after them. Liz laughed, but had no inclination to join them this time, as she was currently focused on something else.

After climbing out of the water, Kid had also removed his white dress shirt in order to dry faster in the sun. He was now lying on his stomach on the flat cover that housed the engine, immersed in some book that he had brought along. Liz was sitting on the lower seat next to where he lay, staring at his back.

Specifically, she was staring at the numerous long, thin scars that covered his small back, wrapping around to his chest and arms where she couldn't see, though she knew they were there. Absentmindedly, she propped her right elbow next to him and began tracing the various scars with one finger. Lost in his reading, Kid didn't even seem to notice, though admittedly, she had been doing this a lot lately, whenever he was sitting next to her: whether he had a shirt covering them or not, it didn't matter, because she had memorized where every one of his scars were. As she ran her fingers over them, she felt the weight of those strange emotions take her over again.

This wasn't supposed to happen to her. It was just her and Patty, and they could both take care of themselves, so there was no reason to worry. She couldn't deny that she had grown to care for this kid, but he was a shinigami… he was tough, he could take care of himself too. So there was no reason for her to feel like she did, to feel like the world that had previously been all she had was now somehow foreign… she shouldn't feel the need to keep Patty and Kid away from every imaginable danger. And when they were out of eyesight, there was no reason for her to worry that something had happened.

Of course, this odd feeling of guilt and worry could be coming from the fact that the last time she looked away, something _did _happen, something she would never forget. Though the scars she now traced along Kid's back would eventually fade (and then he would be more symmetrical again…), they would be forever ingrained into her memory, and those scars served to remind her that something more had happened since she met this kid than just what everyone else saw, something that made her sure that she could never go back to her old life.

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><p>The next chapter will start in the past, so don't be confused when the scene changes. I could have made it just a flashback, but it would have been extremely long and that's a lot to put in italics.<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

Liz was in a real panic, and that didn't happen often. It was a true mark of the seriousness of the situation that she had left Patty back with Shinigami-sama and the others; she would usually flat-out refuse to let her sister be separated from her, but this was different.

If she was wrong—and while she desperately hoped she was right, she also seemed to be praying that she was wrong—she didn't want Patty to see the disappointment on her face, to see the hope leaving her all in one, as it had slowly been draining since six days ago.

And if it turned out that she was right… she wasn't sure what she might find, and didn't want Patty to be there to experience it. The sisters may have grown up on the streets, they may have had to do and see some bad things, but her sister still retained an innocence that Liz was determined to protect. Whatever the circumstance, Patty had never had to feel the crushing weight of the fear that came from worrying about someone you cared for, because Liz could always take care of herself. Liz was the older sister. She was the protective, mothering one. That was her job. And right now, her job consisted of bearing as much of this burden as possible, to keep it off her little sister.

She couldn't believe the kid—_their _Kid—had become so important. It used to be just them. Just her and Patty. They didn't need to worry about anyone else, and because they stuck so close together, it wasn't hard to keep track of each other.

A third presence had changed all of that, though. At first, Shinigami's son had just been another naïve rich brat that they could manipulate, someone they could use for his money and status and power and every other luxury that came along with it. Someone she could use to give Patty a better life. But it had slowly changed. In the beginning, Liz only felt the attachment to their meister because Patty had seemed to take a liking to the kid. But after a while, she noticed that she was starting to feel like he was part of her family, too.

And now… she was experiencing something she'd never felt for anyone but Patty, and it proved to her how much she really cared for Kid. Worry. True, genuine worry. Not the sort where you think maybe something _might_ have gone wrong: the kind where nothing matters but assuring yourself that nothing _has_ gone wrong. Where the only thing that's important in the entire world is making sure that someone you care about is safe.

And that was crushing her right now, because Kid wasn't safe. He very certainly was not. And what brought her to the point of simply collapsing right there and then, thinking she could take no more, was that she wasn't sure how bad it was.

Six days ago, they had been in the middle of a perfectly normal mission. They traveled out to a remote area of the desert to get rid of a monster that had been killing and eating the souls of unwary travelers, lost in the wasteland. The creature wasn't very strong, and they took care of it easily. But it was on the way back that something strange happened.

They had been walking over yet another patch of dusty, sandy terrain, occasionally decorated with dry craggy rocks—this one was no different than all the others—when the sisters noticed that Kid was no longer walking with them. They turned to find him rooted to the spot about ten feet behind them, eyes wide and unfocused, looking rather like he had been hit with something. Of course, this was likely just the prelude to another symmetry rant of his, and so they both rolled their eyes as they took a step back toward him—but he disappeared.

Just like that, there was a strange flash of dark blue, and their meister was gone. They stood, rooted to the spot as he had been moments before, for a few seconds… and then Patty screamed. Desperately trying to calm her younger sister, Liz had assured her that Kid couldn't have gotten far, and had searched the area, but something was seriously wrong. She couldn't feel Kid's soul anywhere in the area. Worse, she couldn't seem to feel an enemy, any sort of harmful presence anywhere near them, and she had never seen anything like that before. After two hours of fruitless searching and calling for her meister while Patty sat in the sand and cried, Liz gave up and contacted Shinigami-sama.

Luckily, Kid was always prepared, and made sure his weapons were too. In case something went wrong during a mission—if Kid were knocked unconscious, or if they were somehow separated—each of the sisters carried a small mirror-like device with which they could establish a weak emergency communication directly with Kid's father.

As Liz activated her own device, an image of Shinigami-sama appeared and his voice crackled faintly out of it. "Liz… what's wrong?" The reaper's tone was not bouncy and cheerful as usual, because he knew that if Liz were contacting him using this device, then something had gone wrong—and as this had been an easy mission, nothing should have gone wrong.

She told him every detail she could remember about how Kid had disappeared. Shinigami quickly sent four experienced meister-weapon teams out to the area to investigate. A little under twenty minutes later, they arrived where Liz and Patty were. Liz showed them the exact spot where Kid had last been standing. The sisters waited around anxiously while the teams investigated. After another half an hour, Stein laid a hand on each of their shoulders—Liz jolted a little; she had been watching the activity so intently that she hadn't even noticed the man come up behind her.

"You ladies should go home for now. We'll have regular updates for Shinigami-sama and you know he has direct contacts to Gallows Manor, he can tell you if we find anything."

Patty didn't want to leave, and neither did Liz, but she could see that standing around here was getting them nowhere. Apparently, Kid had disappeared completely and fully to another place; at this point, they weren't searching for _him_, but for any clue as to where he might be. Reluctantly, Patty accompanied her back to the manor, where they sat around awkwardly, neither wishing to do anything. A grim mood hung in the air around them: it was as though by leaving the place where Kid had disappeared from, they were admitting defeat, admitting that he was lost and that they could do nothing about it.

Shinigami-sama came to them in person three hours later, to tell them that nothing had changed. Patty buried her face in her hands and Liz, knowing that she had no right to break down in front of the younger girl, forced a straight face and softly thanked the reaper, who left the manor looking worried. Not talking, Liz made a small dinner and they commenced waiting.

They waited for six days.

All that time, their hope, and Liz's composure, slowly drained away. With every passing minute, she had to comfort an increasingly hysterical Patty, and at the same time had to try to hold in her own panic. She was falling asleep later each night and waking up earlier each morning, and her nightmares were getting worse; in addition, she was beginning to have terrible daydreams too, vivid scenes that her mind constructed during her restless waking hours; of Shinigami coming to report that they had found Kid's body… of her going off to find Kid just as some unspeakable evil delivered the final blow to her meister, and she was unable to help…

The vision that shook her the most—it haunted her in her dreams as well as in her day-nightmares—was the one where Patty, sweet innocent Patty, went off to some room of the mansion by herself, to find Kid's body on the floor… Liz started following her sister everywhere in the mansion, making sure to enter the rooms before the younger weapon.

After six days of this torture, this waiting, the not knowing, something came. Shinigami-sama told them that they had found something extremely odd at the scene where Kid disappeared. It was an odd, cryptic message that had appeared, carved into the stone beneath the desert sands; it simply said one word—_freedom _. But what made Shinigami suspicious was the symbol below the message. Liz had not seen it, but from what Shinigami said, it was the distinct symbol of an old enemy of Shibusen, who Shinigami-sama himself had fought with, beaten, and imprisoned long ago.

Nothing was confirmed yet, but Liz, desperate to do something, seized upon the small bit of information. She got Shinigami-sama's permission, and headed out to the remote, high-security prison where this enemy of Shibusen—Shinigami-sama called him what sounded like "Rennal"—was kept. Afraid, yet also hopeful, that this might actually be some clue to what had happened to Kid, she had left Patty behind.

And now she stood in front of the door to the cell that held one of the most dangerous enemies Shibusen had ever known. The cell was an enormous steel box, about the size of her room. The guards—there were four posted on every side of the box—told her that the walls of the prison were each a foot thick, made of solid steel. There were a series of four doors leading to the inside, each with the highest security on them. The cell itself was designed to prevent any sort of energy or power from reaching to the outside, as that kind of power could sometimes be used to affect the guards' minds. There was no way out.

Unless, he had found a way… Unless he had escaped, using the desert where he had left his joyous message of freedom… and…

The two men guarding the door looked at her incredulously. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but you must be mistaken. There's no way out. We would have seen it. And there's sensors in there that tell us whether there's a soul of a certain power level inside. There is, see? He's not given food because he can exist without eating. The door has no reason to be opened, and it hasn't been since Shinigami-sama closed it for the first time. He's in there. And what if we were to open the door? Something terrible could happen."

Tears that had been threatening to spill over since Shinigami's announcement of the discovery of Rennal's symbol in the desert were now pushed back by a wall of anger, fueled by panic and growing hysteria. She shoved the letter from Shinigami at the guards. "I don't care. If what I suspect is true, it is not Rennal that is in there, so you don't need to worry about him escaping anyway."

_Please let me be wrong._

The guard stared down at the letter in shock. "Well… This is certainly Shinigami-sama's signature… he really wants us to do this? Does he know…" he trailed off at the murderous look that Liz was giving him.

"Just open it," she said, and the guards hurried to comply. Opening the cell doors was a complicated process in itself, as it required both guards and multiple keys, as well as the turning of wheels, pulling of levers, and several other complicated actions. As each of the four doors swung inwards, the guards shut the one behind them, sealing themselves and Liz between the layers of steel that were _supposed _to keep this monster contained…

As the guards worked at opening the last door to the cell, the tears Liz had been holding back spilled over, and she let them flow freely, most rational thought gone from her mind.

_Oh god, oh please, please let him be alive… if he's in here, please don't let him be gone… please let him not be here… oh god…_

When the click and hiss sounded that meant the seal on the door had been broken, Liz threw her weight against it before the guards could push it open, bursting clumsily into the cell.

The prison smelled musty, not unexpectedly… one dim light was built into the ceiling, which was not at all adequate to light the room. Liz could barely see anything, except that the floor was littered with oddly shaped objects. In the corner closest to her, there were the mangled remains of what appeared to have, at one time, been a small couch. But it had been taken apart to form the objects scattered around the floor, which, Liz saw with a thrill of horror, were weapons of all types. The monster had taken apart any object given to him and used almost everything offered to craft a series of crude but painful-looking blades and other weapons.

With another spike of horror, Liz realized that there was some dark substance coating many of the blades lying on the floor… _blood_… and there were drops of it on the floor, becoming larger in a trail in one direction, until they formed a pool of blood in one dark corner, in which Liz could just barely make out the silhouette of some small, crumpled form on the floor…

Her heart dropped down, through her feet, and below the floor where she might never retrieve it again. _Oh god… no… no, god, please, no…_

She wasn't consciously aware that her feet were carrying her, hurriedly, toward the figure that lay still on the bloodstained floor of the cell, until she had dropped to her knees beside Kid.

_No… you can't… no…_

The young reaper was curled on his side on the floor of the cell, lying in a pool of his own blood, his back to Liz. Reaching out with numbed fingers, hysteria and denial threatening to overwhelm her, she pressed her hand to his neck. _Please…_

Her heart, which she thought she had lost forever, leapt back up into its place and threatened to burst as she felt a weak pulse below her fingers. Letting out a choked sob, she began to heave in breath—she seemed to have been holding it since the door was opened—and her hands started to shake uncontrollably; whether from relief, or fear for the state her meister was in, she neither knew nor cared.

As the ability to form rational thoughts made its reappearance, her mind clicked into emergency mode. Eyes traveling over Kid's still form, she took in his injuries. His body was riddled with long, deep cuts. His normally pristine suit was in tatters. Most of the injuries seemed to be concentrated on his back, some curving around to his arms and chest. His legs appeared fine. It was barely there, but there was a small movement in his chest as he drew short, uneven breaths. He might have broken ribs. Though the vicious injuries to his back were deep, they were not bleeding as heavily as she expected—they must not be extremely recent, and his remarkable healing abilities as a reaper were helping significantly. However, the wounds were still leaking a small amount of dark crimson blood onto the floor, and he wasn't out of danger yet, judging from the volume of blood pooled around him already.

Liz gently turned Kid and moved him so that he was laying in her lap, being careful to keep his head elevated on her knee. He let out a nearly imperceptible sound, barely a breath, as though he wanted to groan but didn't have the energy. Liz thought her heart might break again as she looked down at her meister. One of the guards finally approached her from behind. He gasped as he saw Kid in Liz's arms; no doubt they were not expecting her to have been right. As the other guard approached and leaned over to get a better look at the small form lying in Liz's lap, he gasped and nearly choked. "I-is… is that... _Shinigami-sama's son_?"

Liz looked up at the astonished guard, aware that she still had tears flowing freely down her face and that she was having difficulty getting words out past the lump in her throat. "Yes," she managed after a short pause. "Call Shinigami-sama, now. And hurry."


	3. Chapter 3

In far less time than it had taken Liz to travel to the prison, they were back in Death City; Stein and Spirit had their arms around Liz, who had finally broken down completely when a rescue team had arrived; Kid was now being carried hurriedly into the hospital on a stretcher.

No one was supposed to be in the emergency room with Kid as they worked on him, though Shinigami himself was permitted entrance without question. Spirit and Stein rushed off after Shinigami-sama gave them instruction. Liz briefly considered refusing to be pushed away, demanding she be allowed in to watch over her meister, but she stayed behind for Patty.

The younger weapon had been brought over to the hospital with Shinigami-sama a few minutes after Kid had been taken into the emergency room. Liz entered the waiting room and saw Patty, who was looking far more mature and serious than usual. Liz gave her sister a wan smile, attempting to convey that everything was all right and to cover up her own emotions. But as Patty looked at Liz, her expression of deep concern turned to one of pure horror, and her eyes filled with tears, which spilled over her cheeks as she raised her hands to cover her mouth.

Heart sinking for the second time that evening as she slowly looked down at herself, Liz realized too late that her efforts to reassure her sister with a smile were pointless—she was covered in blood, dark crimson staining her pants and her shirt and even her hair, and her lack of physical wounds made it painfully obvious whose blood it was.

In four long strides, Liz crossed the waiting room and pulled her sister into a tight embrace. Head against Liz's shoulder, Patty gulped and took a deep breath, stopping her tears: despite her usual cheeriness and tendency to openly display what she was feeling, Patty was tough—growing up on the streets had taught her that.

Liz didn't bother whispering useless comforts to Patty, but as she put her hands on her sister's shoulders and leaned down to look directly into Patty's eyes, she couldn't stop herself from saying quietly, "It'll be all right. It always is."

Patty trembled slightly, but caught the veiled sarcasm in the tone of the last sentence, and she gave Liz a small, watery grin.

Taking comfort in each other's presence, they sat side by side in the waiting room for a few minutes in silence, each absorbed in their own thoughts. Liz knew that it would probably be best to try to distract Patty—well, both of them, really—but she didn't want to appear insensitive to what was happening or be overly obvious about it.

Before she could worry any more, Patty took charge, as often the younger, but admittedly braver, sister did when the two were facing a new and unknown situation. Standing up rather suddenly, she announced firmly, "I'm hungry."

It was a small task, but any objective for them to focus on was appreciated, as opposed to sitting there in silence, thinking sadly of their meister. The distraction proved more efficient than they had first imagined, as it took them almost ten minutes to locate a vending machine, and when they did, they realized that they didn't have any money on them.

Liz suggested they go to the cafeteria; they might be able to beg some food off of the workers there, or maybe (though she didn't voice this particular thought) they had a discount for people who were waiting while their family members got emergency surgery. On the way, they found another vending machine, which someone had put a dollar into and then evidently forgotten about. Liz bought a packet of strawberry fruit snacks, and at Patty's groan, insisted that they would fill her up more than candy. They went back to the grim waiting room, Liz looking bleak but smiling warily, Patty clutching her food triumphantly.

They sat back down, but did not revert to the strained silence of before. Instead, they seemed to gain back some of their energy, moving around and occupying themselves with small tasks. Patty started playing with Liz's long hair. Liz dumped out the fruit snacks onto a small side table next to the seats where they were, and counted them. There were seventeen; she ate one and separated them into piles of eight.

She wasn't sure if it was some sort of tribute to Kid, or if subconsciously, she hoped that making everything more symmetrical would somehow help him heal faster, but she found herself adhering to the laws of symmetry that Kid normally obsessed over. She divided the fruit snacks on the table into groups of four and set them up in equal parallel lines. As she passed them back to Patty and ate some herself, she was sure to take them in even numbers from each side. When there was not an even number, she would simply arrange them all into one perfectly straight line. Patty, too, kept restarting the braid in Liz's hair, stating that there was not an equal amount of hair in each of the three pieces used in the braid.

When all the fruit snacks were gone, Patty finally finished Liz's braid; sitting back, she announced happily, "perfect!"

Liz turned back to her sister, smiling. "It's all equal?"

"Yup! I even counted the strands of hair in each one!"

Liz sincerely doubted that, but Patty was smiling in a joking manner, so Liz didn't look skeptical, but laughed. It was actually more of a dry chuckle, but she considered it progress from the state she had been in before.

They talked for a while, and then lapsed into a more comfortable silence, Patty leaning her head on Liz's shoulder. After another hour or so, Liz realized that Patty had fallen asleep sitting there, and before long she felt herself nodding off too.

She didn't know how long she had been there, but Liz woke from a mercifully dreamless sleep to a young woman in nurse's scrubs shaking her gently. Blinking wearily, she took a moment to focus on her surroundings; upon remembering why she was there, she jolted upright and Patty stirred beside her, rubbing her eyes and blinking at the nurse, who smiled softly.

"Elizabeth and Patricia? Kid is out of surgery; we're keeping him in the ICU for the moment just to make sure nothing goes wrong. You may come in and see him now, though we have to ask you not to disturb him in any way."

Liz mumbled a thanks to the nurse and followed her through the hallways a short distance to the room where they were keeping Kid. Though the nurse had sounded reassuring and clearly nothing had gone seriously wrong, Liz felt her anxiety returning; beside her, Patty's eyes were wider than usual and she was clutching Liz's arm.

As they neared the room, the door swung inward and Shinigami-sama emerged. It was impossible to see any sort of emotion from him through his mask, but some of the bounce seemed to have returned to his movement, which was a good sign. "Liz, Patty, I'm going to go talk to Spirit and Stein about something, I'll be back in an hour or so," he said. His tone was not as cheerful as usual, but it wasn't completely serious and grim either. Liz and Patty nodded silently and entered the room Shinigami-sama had vacated. The nurse closed the door softly behind them and walked off to give them privacy.

Liz hesitated at the doorway, but Patty took her hand gently and led them out of the doorway to where they could see the rest of the room. There were two beds, but only one was occupied. Two chairs sat on either side of the bed where Kid lay, and they each took one.

Kid was asleep, and his face looked almost peaceful; there was only the slightest hint of a frown, as though he was in pain but it was being repressed. The sheets on the bed were pulled up to cover his legs, and his hands were draped across his stomach. He had no clothing on his upper body, but they could barely see any of his pale skin, as bandages were wrapped around almost every inch of his small chest and all the way up to his neck. They also covered his shoulders and most of his arms, though his hands appeared undamaged. There was an IV line in his left arm, a steady drip from the bag on a pole rising up near his head, but he didn't appear to be hooked to any other machines. He was breathing more steadily than when Liz had found him in the prison, though his breaths were still shallow and sounded pained.

Liz found herself gazing at his face, which was paler than normal, but thankfully not scarred or bandaged. As she watched his still face, she thought that she would give almost anything in the world right then for her meister's eyes to open, for him to pierce her with that odd golden stare, even to reprimand her for swearing or messing up the symmetry of his house.

And she wondered when this kid had become so important to her. Sure, she liked him, she even considered him a part of her family like Patty. But she never realized how much she worried about him. When they were in battle and something happened to Kid, even some trivial injury, she got an anxious, twisting feeling, which she had always just attributed to worrying about Patty or herself, or maybe the success of their mission. She hadn't thought it was about Kid. Her thoughts wandered to some of their past missions.

She didn't quite know what had happened, but Shinigami-sama was shaking her awake again. She blinked wearily and realized that both of the sisters had fallen asleep again, slumped over in their chairs on either side of Kid in the dimly lit room. When Liz got up and joined Patty at the reaper's side, a doctor who had been standing behind Shinigami-sama squeezed behind her chair and emptied a full syringe of something into Kid's IV line, then scrutinized it with a slight frown.

"Come on, girls, I'll take you back to the manor," Shinigami-sama said, but the sisters looked up at him pleadingly.

"Can't we stay with Kid?" Asked Patty, casting a glance in the direction of the bed, where the doctor was now leaning over the young reaper. The doctor looked up and saw Patty staring at Kid's face; seeming to realize the reason for their hesitancy, he spoke, gesturing at Kid.

"His wounds are serious, and even though they'll heal much faster than any human's would, right now it's dangerous even to move him slightly. He could do a lot of damage to himself if he wakes up and moves around, not to mention he'll be in a considerable amount of pain when he regains consciousness, and his body rejects most painkillers. We're going to keep him out for at least another few days, until his wounds have healed to the point where he won't open them again if he wakes."

Though this pronouncement was rather grim, Liz and Patty didn't have to worry that Kid would wake in the night without them there, and they couldn't deny that they were tired. Hospital waiting rooms and the chairs next to patients' beds were not the best places for a good rest, either. Somewhat reluctantly, they accompanied Shinigami-sama quietly out of the hospital. On the way out, the reaper earned a few terrified stares from humans who were passing by at this late hour—though most of the people in Death City respected Shinigami-sama and did not tend to fear him, it was not generally considered a good sign to see Death at a hospital.

Shinigami-sama saw the girls off at Gallows Manor and they went inside, but did not head for their separate bedrooms; in unspoken agreement, they both went to Kid's perfectly symmetrical room. After straightening one of the picture frames on the wall, Patty wriggled under the covers of Kid's giant bed with Liz, who had changed out of her bloodstained clothes, and they fell asleep holding each other safely in their arms, warding off nightmares.


	4. Chapter 4

Okay, before anything else, I have to say, I'm SO sorry that I haven't been updating, and thank you so much to those of you who have been patiently waiting for updates, and haven't given up on me yet. The first three years of high school, even with AP and honors classes, they always told us "you'll have between two and three hours of homework a night," but it was usually more like 15 minutes. Now, senior year, it really IS around three hours a night. Not to mention, I have to go and do cultural activities, organize group work, and check papers for humanities, as well as volunteering for National Honor Society and on my own time so that I can hope to have at least a small chance of getting into one of my top four choices of university…

Well, enough of my excuses. I hope you stay with the story, even though I won't be updating very often while school is in session. To make up for it, during breaks of at least three days, I will attempt to spend as much of my time as possible writing. So there will be random updates at pretty random times. Sorry about that.

Oh, and a note: some people here, in their stories, seem to refer to "shinigami" as a sort of race, the way they are in Bleach. But I feel like Shinigami is _Shinigami_, that he was the only one until he had Kid, and there are not others out there. After all, if there were, then Shinigami-sama wouldn't have that title, he would just be one of the many shinigami out there. Because of this, obviously, the doctors and such in Death City don't really know much about shinigami (referring to Kid and his father) and really don't have any experience with them, because obviously no one has ever exactly examined and studied Shinigami-sama himself; plus, being basically human in form, Kid is sort of a new phenomenon anyway. (Though I do not discredit stories including it, I personally do not think that Shinigami-sama is a human underneath his robes/mask, and I don't think he's part human (most of how I imagine Kid/Shinigami will be explained in _Careful Observation_, if I ever get around to posting that…)). So if the doctors in this story seem kind of clueless and rather useless, it's because they aren't really sure exactly how to take care of Kid.

Also: yes, I know (realized after the fact) that this chapter sounds a lot like the chapter of the manga where they go into the greed part of Eibon's book and Liz realizes how much Kid means to her... haha I didn't think about that when I wrote it, but whatever.

All right, update: I was going to post this about two weeks ago, but my laptop stopped connecting to the internet and I couldn't figure out why; then, a month and a half later, I realized that I had pressed the wireless button accidentally. WHY DO THEY EVEN INCLUDE THAT DUMB BUTTON? Okay, I am done ranting.

* * *

><p>Five more days passed before they let Kid wake up. His injuries began to heal, but they didn't seem to be healing nearly as fast as the smaller, more trivial injuries he had sustained in battles with Liz and Patty in the past. Before, he could be sliced up pretty badly, nearly enough to have a normal human unconscious, and be perfectly fine again in a few hours. But now, although he was recovering more quickly than any human would, it wasn't nearly at the pace that they had expected.<p>

This impression stemmed partly from Liz and Patty's concern for the young reaper; they naturally wished him to heal as fast as possible, and the more they wanted something, the longer it seemed to take. But it wasn't entirely their imaginations. Shinigami-sama told them that Kid's healing abilities were not directly proportional to his injuries: the worse the injury, the lower the rate of his recovery.

This seemed to be inefficient to Liz—after all, it would increase chances of survival more if the body healed faster for worse injuries—but then again, compared to humans, Kid was still far superior. And he was strong; though the doctors hadn't said it, it was obvious that no human would have survived that. Just the fact that Kid was still alive meant he was capable of pulling through.

Patty took this as a cue that life would return to normal soon, and almost immediately became her bubbly and energetic self once more. Liz often envied her sister's ability to be so relaxed. She herself still found herself brooding and locking herself away from friends, spending hours at a time sitting around, just thinking of her meister. She knew it was irrational, and Kid would probably reprimand her for thinking of it if she told him; but as more time passed, she began to blame herself in part for what had happened. If she had been closer to him in the desert, maybe he wouldn't have disappeared in the first place. And even though she couldn't have done anything to speed up the appearance of the clue that led them to where he was, she blamed herself for him being in such a condition when she found him.

They hadn't yet returned to school, not wishing to be besieged with requests from less sensitive students to retell their own story, or, perhaps just as bad, the concerned looks and questions from their closer friends. Less than a day after Kid was found, Maka, Soul, Black Star, and Tsubaki tracked Liz and Patty down and gave their sympathies—Liz could hardly stand their kindness—and also requested to see their friend. Thankfully, Shinigami-sama had told the hospital staff that only family was allowed in to see Kid. Liz was honored that the Reaper considered she and Patty family, and also grateful that he had denied the entrance of the others: they might be close friends, but Liz knew Kid wouldn't want them to see him in this state.

Five days after Kid was taken into the hospital, the doctors told Shinigami-sama and the sisters that they would be letting him off the medications that were currently keeping him unconscious. He had healed enough that small movements would not reopen his wounds, and though they had no experience with how shinigami healed or reacted, they hoped that he would not be in quite as much pain now as if he had woken four days ago.

Shinigami-sama had been intending to stay around, but was called off for something important. This couldn't just be left to Spirit and Stein, as he had been doing for most of the past week and a half, so only Liz and Patty were there when Kid was going to wake. They stayed the night in Kid's room; the doctors couldn't be sure exactly when he would wake, but they imagined it would be sometime in the night. Since Liz and Patty were going to stay by their meister's bedside, the staff did not post a nurse in the room, but there was one on duty on that floor, who told them to call her in when he woke.

It took a little longer than they had expected. It had been dark for a few hours, and Patty was asleep in her chair, when Liz heard Kid stir. The lights were off in the room, but the backlights that were always on behind a patient's bed provided enough light that Liz could see Kid moving slightly.

When they had first taken up their posts beside Kid that evening, Liz had imagined herself to be hovering over him when he woke, worried and simultaneously overjoyed to see him wake up, but something prevented her from doing that. Instead, she was sitting still on his bed, knees drawn up to her chest, staring at the floor.

Liz stayed silent as her meister coughed quietly at her side. She could practically feel him grimace in pain, and knew he was repressing it, trying to be strong even now. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she desperately wanted to turn and sob and tell him that she was so sorry for letting him go through that—but some stubborn impulse kept her where she was until Kid had slowly pushed himself upward to a near-sitting position against the pillows, and opened his eyes again, seeming to notice for the first time that she was there.

Liz saw him open his mouth out of the corner of her eye, even in the dim light, but before he could make a sound, she spoke.

"We shouldn't have felt like this."

Kid had laid a hand across his chest—he had six broken ribs and must have had difficulty breathing—and stared at the older weapon in the darkness. He must have sensed that she needed to vent her feelings, and stayed silent.

"It's just me and Patty. Everyone knew us—the Thompson Sisters, the twin demons of Brooklyn… we could take care of ourselves. And that's all we need to take care of. Then you came along…

"I could barely stand you from the day we met. Some spoiled little rich brat who acted like he was doing us a _favor_, bringing us into 'civilized life' or something, like we'd lived like savages until then or something, and you were some sort of angel that'd come to save us. It was ironic, too, because if anything, you were closer to a devil than anyone we'd ever met.

"I didn't believe it, you know; when you told us your father was the Grim Reaper… I hadn't believed in that sort of fairy tale stuff for years. Besides, there were scarier things than death out there on the streets. And when I really met him, and really realized that all this—this city, these people, you—were real, I was scared, for Patty and for me, but not because I was afraid of any of you. I was afraid for us, because I didn't know this world like I knew the streets. Back in Brooklyn, I knew exactly who the worst gangs were, I could tell when a person was innocent and when they should be avoided. I knew where to get food and where to go if me or Patty got hurt… but I didn't know anything about this place, or you. And I was afraid of not knowing. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to protect Patty. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to tell if you, or anyone else, actually wanted to hurt us.

"But after a while with you, I started to realize that that was just my first impression—I thought bad things, automatically, about everyone, because most of them weren't trustworthy, and because so many of them had tried to hurt us in the past… to hurt Patty… me…

"You weren't like that, but that didn't mean much. You'd just been raised differently—you were so spoiled that you didn't ever need to rob or steal or lie or cheat. Patty couldn't see all that. She liked you, thought you were just the greatest thing ever to happen to us, so I put up with you; besides, you gave us a source of nice clothes and money and stuff…

"And life went on, and we went on missions, and I actually started to care about you, just a little, mostly for Patty's sake. But even though she couldn't see it—or maybe _because_ she couldn't—couldn't see all the dangers everywhere, couldn't see that at any time you could suddenly decide that we weren't good enough for you… so it was my responsibility to see all that. I had to keep my distance, and you really weren't exactly trying to get us to love you as much as possible, so it wasn't hard to stay away…"

Liz's composure was rapidly falling away, and she let out a sort of choked half-sob and buried her head between her knees.

"It wasn't hard… I thought…

"And then, here we were, and…"

Liz raised her head, still staring determinedly at the opposite wall.

"When you disappeared, I just completely panicked. I had no idea what to do. I couldn't just keep calm like always. Patty freaked out, and I could barely do anything for her, because I was freaking out myself. You… I felt…

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"I felt the same way I would if Patty ever disappeared. And then I realized that I'd been faking it—I wasn't keeping my distance at all. You're as close to us as we are to each other, and when you disappeared, when I was sure you were hurt, I couldn't stand it. I don't know when it happened. It's supposed to be just me and Patty. Just us. Living with some rich kid, yeah, but just for his money… and you… Kid…"  
>Liz turned, tears slowly drawing trails down her cheeks, and finally looked into the golden eyes she had so desperately missed. "Kid… what did you do to us?"<p>

Kid stared, at a loss for words, not sure what to feel or how to respond. But before he had time to respond, Liz had moved forward and wrapped her arms around him, resting his head against her shoulder. She didn't squeeze him at all, not wanting to hurt him, but the emotion was there. "I'm so sorry." Liz's voice was muffled in Kid's hair. "I worried about you so much…"

He didn't speak; he didn't need to. He wrapped one free arm around Liz's waist and leaned against her; exhausted, injured, silent... and alive.


End file.
